Prius hybrid battery fails at 70K miles, Toyota won’t pay for $3700 repair
When buying these cars, don't people know that batteries don't last forever, or in this case, the life of the car. This guy buys this car and has it for 9 years and has only 70,000 miles? Looks like he did not get his money worth.
Last week our 2001 Prius started acting strangely, and today SF Toyota gave me the bad news. The hybrid battery is shot and a replacement will cost just under $3700, tax included. We’re a year and half 8 months out of warranty, it turns out, so the repair cost is 100% our responsibility.
Our Prius in happier days. Photo courtesy of sfgate.com.
Our 2001 Prius in happier times. Photo courtesy sfgate.com.
This is a vehicle that was on the front page of the SF Chronicle in 2001, as a poster child for early adopters of green technology. We’ve bought another Prius since then and I’ve been looking with interest at the lithium-powered next generation coming in 2012. But this changes the equation. If you can expect to pay for a $3700 repair at 70,000 miles, the car suddenly becomes much more expensive as well as less reliable… what happens if the failure occurs elsewhere than in a major city?
I remember the naysayers when we bought it: “the battery’s going to die and it will cost you a fortune.” The reviewers scoffed at this: batteries don’t last forever, but it is unlikely to fail in the driving life of the vehicle. Too bad that’s not true. The $3700 new battery is warranted for 12 months. I guess that tells you something.
News like this could have a chilling effect on hybrid sales, just when we need a nitty-gritty, ready-right-now antidote for energy waste and climate change. (I love seeing the MPG on our 2006 Prius creep over 50, combined with the fact that the car has actually been made less efficient in order to come close to zeroing out the emissions.)
yeah, it's warrantied for 8 years which seems pretty reasonable to me. sucks for those that have to pay it, of course.
but it is unlikely to fail in the driving life of the vehicle. Too bad that’s not true
well, he has low mileage on it, but it's nine years old. i'm not sure what the average is (12-15k/year?) for normal use...so just because he parked it and let the warranty run out isn't a great reason to be upset. i've helped friends purchase three hybrids and they (honda) have a similar warranty on the batteries and they overstated how long to expect it to last...so it won't be a shock to the owner if/when it happens.
I agree with FP. That battery is phenomenal if it can make it nine years. $3,700 really isn't that bad for a repair such as this.
Does a dead battery render a Prius totally inoperable or will the engine just take over?
I love this from the blog:
Toyota needs to fix this.
They gave you 8 years in the first place. Most people trade their cars in at 5.
9 years and only 70K? Is my math right? This means he only drove ~12.5 miles per week? It sounds to me like he really didn't need a car in the first place. I've have my Avenger for almost 2 years now and have clocked over 75K.
in the end, the guy knew what the warranty was before buying it (if he didn't, then he is even more at fault for not doing his DD before buying)...so you can't complain about something you knew ahead of time. he chose to buy it.
i put very low miles on my cars, but that's because i have a winter/utility car and a second "nice" one. i can see him having low miles. just like him, my newer car's bumper-to-bumper runs out in three years and it will have FAR less miles than the warranty allows. doesn't mean i can whine if it explodes (yes, i would whine...but not in a public or blog fashion like this guy...it's just bad luck).
I'm only guessing here but i bet if the car was in the colder parts of the country like lets say the Midwest .that battery never of lasted even close to what it did for him.
now my nephew who is a plastic eng. for GM has plans to buy a Volt next year when its released. i think the car has some flare. but nothing like it did when it was when going around the country as a photo type . i do see the same short comings with battery's on it to .
i just don't see battery powered autos in the near future being cars for long hauls.
i like to see you try making a trip lets say from new york to LA or detroit to tampa in one .
and do so in a couple of days of stright driving. its just not going to happen with the recharge time required for the batterys. also weight restrictions on battery cars.
the Last time I was Talking to myself . I got into such a heated argument . that is why I swore I never talk to that guy again. you know what it worked now no buddy talking to me.
The Prius is very popular here where I live. Nearby is a lot of retirees living in a 50,000+ home golf community and most of them use golf carts to get around locally primarily (all the shopping is reachable via golf cart). So a lot of them own a Prius as their gas vehicle and they don't drive very far. Perfect vehicle for them. There's a lot of those little SMART cars here too.
Not unusual for a retiree around here to have a car that's 8 years old with very little mileage on it. This is a mecca for buying used cars.
Christians warn us about the anti-christ for 2,000 years, and when he shows up, they buy a bible from him.
I'm wondering when these hybrids get older and become traded, thus used cars if their re-sale value will drastically decline. After all, who wants to be paying for those batteries? At $3700, their cost has gone down, use to be over $5K but still that's a chunk of $$ to put into an older car. Also, what's the point of saving $$ at the pump, driving a small, slow car when you're stuck with that repair bill? That's more $$ than I've paid for my used cars that have then lasted me 12+ years and no major expenses and the cars were larger, more usefull and had performance too.
I did some research on the Prius for a speech and was surprised by a few things. When the batteries die, typically it is not from the actual battery reaching the end of its useful (chemically or whatever), it is actually most often from the connections that link the individual cells of the battery corroding. Unfortunatly that means that you can't really believe the dealer that wants you to buy a $3700 battery, because it MAY just mean that they don't want to/ don't know how to fix what is actually wrong with a battery that is still ok.
As far as saving the planet goes....
lets just say that they don't have an animated laughing smiley large enough.
as far as I know the manufacture of hybrid vehicles is still subsidized by the US government otherwise they would have to raise the price to the point that nobody would ever buy one ( please tell me if you know I am mistaken )
Both the battery and the electric motors rely on materials that are exztremely rare and only mined in any quantity one or two places in the world
and their fuel milage is still marginally better than comparible small vehicles like the xion
is it a technological masterpiece? yes.
if you want to save the environment you are better off planting a few trees and putting sod on your roof!
(when did this turn into a rant??? I'm sorry.)
Run, run, run, as fast as you can...
you can't catch me, I'm the Stinky Cheese Man.
When the batteries die, typically it is not from the actual battery reaching the end of its useful (chemically or whatever), it is actually most often from the connections that link the individual cells of the battery corroding. Unfortunatly that means that you can't really believe the dealer that wants you to buy a $3700 battery, because it MAY just mean that they don't want to/ don't know how to fix what is actually wrong with a battery that is still ok.
I don't know where you got that info but as a factory trained Lexus dealer tech, I can assure you that any Toyota dealer tech wouldn't jump to a $3,700 guess like that, they'd actually LOOK at it and TEST it first. If there was corrosion, they'd clean that off first and re-test. ALL batteries have a finite life span, IE, they only last just so many years, not forever.
An average tech is not going to disassemble a battery unit. they will plug it in and do a capacitive / resistance test and if it comes out bad the whole thing is bad.
It built like forklift batteries. you can change out bad cells instead of tossing the whole thing out.
[align=center]A self-aware artificial intelligence would suffer from a divide by zero error if it were programmed to be Amish[/align]
An average tech is not going to disassemble a battery unit. they will plug it in and do a capacitive / resistance test and if it comes out bad the whole thing is bad.
It's sold as a unit so as a unit, it's good or it fails and if it fails, the unit is replaced as a whole.
maybe I should specify. What I was reading... and the link has dissapeared as this was a couple semesters ago... was talking about corrosion of the connections within the battery linking the cells together.
As you said, the battery is tested as a unit and if it fails, the unit is replaced as a whole. What I was reading said that most of the cells within the battery are still good on a typical "bad" one... but no tech is going to take it on his own and start dissasembling the battery to find out exactly why it tests bad.
Run, run, run, as fast as you can...
you can't catch me, I'm the Stinky Cheese Man.
